The first of 23 caissons for Princess Elisabeth Island, the world’s first artificial energy island, is nearly complete.
Princess Elisabeth Island will be an electricity grid at sea that will connect offshore wind farms to the Belgian mainland and also serve as a hub for future interconnectors with the UK and Denmark. Belgian electricity transmission system operator Elia is the project’s developer.
The 20,000-ton caissons, which will form the energy island’s outer walls, are being built at Jan De Nul Group and DEME’s construction site in Vlissingen, the Netherlands. It takes around three months to build one caisson. The production process is split into five 20-day stages. The caissons are moved between the different work sites using “runners,” which takes about six hours.
When the caissons are ready, a…